President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday ended weeks of deadlock, leading to the selection of retired Justice of Appeal Claudette Singh SC as the new Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), thereby clearing a key hurdle on the path towards the holding of general elections.
Justice Singh, who will be the first female chair of GECOM, was selected following a meeting between the two leaders yesterday and the announcement came amid growing pressure for a new appointee in the aftermath of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruling on June 18th that Granger’s unilateral appointment of retired judge James Patterson as Chairman was unconstitutional. Patterson subsequently resigned from the post. His unilateral appointment had come after Granger rejected three lists of candidates in 2017 from Jagdeo.
The new GECOM Chairman will immediately face two major issues: how to handle the CCJ edict that Article 106 (6) of the constitution requires general elections in three months from June 18th, 2019, when the CCJ validated the passage of a motion of no-confidence against the APNU+AFC government on December 21st, 2018. The new Chairman will also have to preside over a deeply divided GECOM on the question of whether controversial house-to-house registration for a new national register should be halted.
The Ministry of the Presidency (MoTP) announced yesterday that Singh was selected by President Granger from a formal list submitted by Jagdeo. The two leaders had haggled for weeks over the composing of a list of six names “not unacceptable” to the president and this process was only concluded yesterday.
Singh, who is in her mid-70s, was the only woman on the list of six which also included retired judges BS Roy and William Ramlal, attorneys Kashir Khan and Ronald Burch-Smith, and Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Consultant Lawrence Lachmansingh.
A brief statement from MoTP explained that Granger met Jagdeo at the Ministry of the Presidency, where they continued a series of meetings aimed at ‘hammering out’ the list of six nominees “not unacceptable” to the president.
The Leader of the Opposition agreed to submit such a list, which was received and reviewed by the President later in the afternoon in an effort to bring the selection process to a speedy and favourable conclusion.
“This was aimed at ensuring that the Elections Commission could resume its normal functions with the aim of conducting General and Regional Elections in the shortest possible time,” it noted, while adding that the president “swiftly made a selection from the list of nominees” and approved Justice Singh, who it said satisfies the criteria for the appointment and also satisfies the ruling of the CCJ for a consensual appointment supported by both the president and the opposition leader.
Jagdeo at a press conference following the announcement described Singh’s selection as an “extremely positive development for our country.”
‘Very, very happy’
“Finally we have resolved the issue of a new chairperson for GECOM,” he stressed noting that he was “Very, very happy with this development.”
“The process was consensual. The (six) names enjoyed my confidence and the confidence of the president. They were found not unacceptable to him and, therefore, he chose from a list of six names I submitted to him. There was no question of a unilateral appointment,” he stressed, while adding that Justice Singh enjoys the confidence of the opposition, which believes she will deliver fair elections to Guyana.
He briefly reminded of the nearly one-month process, which led to the selection of a new chair following the June 18th decision by the CCJ that Patterson had been unconstitutionally appointed chair in 2017.
Following a meeting between Granger and Jagdeo on July 3rd, a series of engagements between representatives of the two leaders saw the president identifying four names from a list of 11 as “not unacceptable”.
That list which included Annette Arjoon-Martins, B S Roy, Gerry Gouveia, Joseph Singh, Kashir Khan, Krisndatt Persaud, Lawrence Lachmansingh, Norman McLean, Onesi La Fleur, Ramesh Dookhoo and William Ramlal appears to have been whittled down to Roy, Khan, Lachmansingh and Ramlal.
The President in turn had suggested eight names: Stanley Ming, Kesaundra Alves, Dr Aubrey Armstrong, Kadim Khan, Kim Kyte-Thomas, Justice Claudette La Bennett and Justice Stanley Moore and Justice Patterson. He later shortlisted Alves and La Bennett from this list. Jagdeo indicated last week that neither of the names found favour with him and he submitted an additional four names. These four names were not released to the public.
Yesterday, Jagdeo said that the president chose an additional name from the list of four, Burch-Smith, after which there was a “very positive engagement,” during which there were discussions on another nominee, Singh.
“A nominee which I had asked to be part of my submissions some time ago when I submitted the second list of names to the President [in 2017]. At that time, she said she could not accede to my request to be part of the names going forward,” the Opposition Leader stated, before adding that after further engagement yesterday Singh agreed to have her name submitted to the president, who found her “not unacceptable.”
Thereafter, Granger officially wrote Jagdeo, triggering the provisions of Article 161 (2), with which he duly complied.
Singh, who is expected to be sworn in on Monday, was called to the Bar in London in 1973 and admitted to the Bar in Guyana in 1976. She was one of three women appointed Senior Counsel in 2017 for her service as the Deputy Solicitor General and as a Puisne Judge and a Justice of Appeal and her leadership in spearheading the Modernisation of the Justice Reform Project, and as the Guyana Police Force’s Legal Advisor.
One of Singh’s important decisions as a High Court judge was in the election petition case brought by Esther Perreira that had challenged the results of the 1997 general elections, which had seen the accession to office of PPP/C President Janet Jagan. After lengthy hearings, Singh vitiated the results of the 1997 general elections on the grounds that there had been an unconstitutional use of a voter ID card. Her ruling mandated that a caretaker government was then in place and it should proceed swiftly to general elections.
In 2005, while she was a High Court judge, Singh had been passed over for the position of Chief Justice. The position was given to her junior, now retired Justice Carl Singh, who then went on to serve as acting Chancellor of the Judiciary until his departure in 2017.
